I am curious to see how Intel positions the server Atom chip in comparison to Xeon Phi.

I see server atom fitting that segment of servers which contain a sea of weak cores. But Xeon Phi is basically that, albeit integrated onto a monolithic chip.

So what sort of niche within the niche does server Atom fill that a Xeon Phi is overkill?

Xeon Phi has a scalar pipeline, meaning its 1 issue, with the other being used for vector. But the Atom is superscalar, meaning its more than 1 issue, in this case, two. Also the former has a clock speed up to 1GHz, while the Atom can go 1.5GHz or more.

You also have lot less memory per core on the Xeon Phi, with 8GB for <=60 of them, while Atom can get that much per 2 cores.

Intel said eventually Xeon Phi will use Atom cores, and maybe then we'll see a version with "sea of weak cores" in one package, but right now this is what we have.

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ViRGE
Team Anandtech: Assimilating a computer near you!GameStop - An upscale specialized pawnshop that happens to sell new games on the sideTodd the Wraith: On Fruit Bowls - I hope they prove [to be] as delicious as the farmers who grew them

Eh, they kind of have a point. If Intel had wanted to push microservers, they could have done it years ago. They had 64 bit capable Atom back on day one, and we're still on basically the same core as we were back then too. They're only doing this now as a reaction to ARM.

Eh, they kind of have a point. If Intel had wanted to push microservers, they could have done it years ago. They had 64 bit capable Atom back on day one, and we're still on basically the same core as we were back then too. They're only doing this now as a reaction to ARM.

It's less about the point and more about the very poor delivery. Though I'm not so sure Intel could have done this at 45nm; Pineview's power consumption wasn't as low as Centerton, which given Intel's fascination with 6W might be significant.

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ViRGE
Team Anandtech: Assimilating a computer near you!GameStop - An upscale specialized pawnshop that happens to sell new games on the sideTodd the Wraith: On Fruit Bowls - I hope they prove [to be] as delicious as the farmers who grew them

So what sort of niche within the niche does server Atom fill that a Xeon Phi is overkill?

The Xeon phi doesn't help much in actually getting the data out the door. I could see it doing encryption/decryption in a server, but actually pulling data from hard drives and shuffling it to the network card requires a CPU in the motherboard to play middle man. Xeon Phi is more intended for supercomputing.

The Xeon phi doesn't help much in actually getting the data out the door. I could see it doing encryption/decryption in a server, but actually pulling data from hard drives and shuffling it to the network card requires a CPU in the motherboard to play middle man. Xeon Phi is more intended for supercomputing.

It is comical now how bad AMD has become. I actually laughed a little when reading AMDs scathing email.

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"Communism can be defined as the longest route from capitalism to capitalism."
"Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth. Socialism is the equal distribution of poverty"
"Because you can trust freedom when it is not in your hand. When everybody is fighting for their promised land"

Reminds me of that Valentines day advertisement prior to bulldozer launch that was complete bullocks as well. These guys should just stop the amateur hour moves, it simply looks childish and foolish.

Boss+3 of you how makes the decision you will later suffer from in general won't have a clue and won't even get how ridiculous that email is. So it makes sense for AMDs point of view. It's clearly not targeted at "enthusiasts".

Beside that I think this is not that bad if the price is right and it is available for us like to build a ultra low power NAS. (ECC compared to a Pentium/i3 based NAS).

However $54 per chip is not exactly that cheap and 8 GB of memory, works for a NAS but for real world use, kind of limiting. Maybe I'm wrong but if you could pack a ton of RAM such a thing could be used for memcached (or eqivalents).

I would actually get this is a replacement for my 4GB E6300 rig - I just use it for network storage, GPU DC crunching, and to play with VMs for school. It's actually underclocked/undervolted. Raw CPU performance is the least of my concerns.

However $54 per chip is not exactly that cheap and 8 GB of memory, works for a NAS but for real world use, kind of limiting. Maybe I'm wrong but if you could pack a ton of RAM such a thing could be used for memcached (or eqivalents).

Speaking of NAS, Intel has a variant specifically for NAS systems. The code-name is Briarwood.

-4 channel DMA
-RAID 5 and 6 support
-And has the goodies the non-NAS Atom S supports like PCI Express 2.0(8 lanes), UART, SPI, and LPC.
-While its meant to be connected to the outside world using a seperate chipset via its PCI Express 2.0 port, it can also function without it making it a full SoC